The first week of Fringe is over. We’ve officially entered the festival’s Middle Ages. By now, ‘Everyman’ has probably settled on a schedule, deciding which ludus or mystère to attend. But if a few gaps remain in your itinerary, and you’re still wondering which pageant wagon to stop at, this Chamber of Rhetoric has a few notes to share.
Covered in this article, in order of recommendation: Gratitude; Ooga Chaka; God Save the Sodomites; Assembly Süggested; outside these walls, everyone is sleeping; Danse Macabre; Who? hú 狐.
GRATITUDE. (Disturbing.) It is uncomfortable to sit through Gratitude. Oren Safdie’s script sustains a razor-sharp tension reminiscent of an Edward Bond brutalist tragedy. Except here, the sneaky, morally slippery characters are all teenagers, making the act of judging them even more insidious. Inside the boys’ locker room of a private high school, predatory Dariya (Iman Ramadan) “pops guys’ cherries.” From the confident Drew (Tiernan Tajalli) to the dim-witted Ben (Isaac Wolf Silvers), the boys simply take their chance. In their warped logic, since Dariya has already reduced herself to an object of pleasure, why shouldn’t they capitalize on her?
Working with extreme simplicity on an almost bare set – just three rails hung with graffiti-covered shower curtains – Safdie and Fatima Lopez direct with a steady hand, exposing the reek of moral rot in every encounter. Each scene is framed by operatic music, whose grand dramatic intensity clashes splendidly with the depravity of the situations. As the characters’ corrupted moral compasses are revealed, each driven by pleasure, obsession or opportunity, only Josh (Quinlan Welch) emerges as even remotely less morally dubious, trying to find a way out for Dariya and himself. As the play descends into darker terrain, watching it feels like staring at something so twisted you know you should look away. But you can’t: it’s simply too treacherously written and too vulnerably acted.
OOGA CHAKA. (Rambunctious.) Don’t you miss theatre before Stanislavski’s super-objectives? Before pretentious experimentation? Before market-driven calculation? Pucker’s Company has built a rollicking comedy that riotously teases the machinery of theatre. Ethan Zuchkan’s script takes us back to the Neolithic, where Bungu (Ben Yoganathan) and Kiki (Rachel Cucheron) have just invented the genre. What begins as a simple tool for personal expression soon hardens into a heartless industry. What won’t one do for peblos, the currency of the Neolithic?
From the diva Horp (Kole Durnford), whose swollen head comes accessorized with sunglasses and An Actor Prepares, to the coldly calculating Rock (Nicholas Eddie), the comedy has a charming, Flintstones-like appeal. Its characters are boisterous, and the restless ensemble plays them with brisk, poppy energy. In 郝邦宇 Steven Hao’s direction, gags abound with invention, from sly nods to cultural touchstones such as Rent, Dirty Dancing, and Titanic to the show’s running joke about theatrical “bright ideas”: a torch lighting up above the characters’ heads. The silly atmosphere makes for a rowdy evening of entertainment, but it also leaves room for a light-hearted reflection on commerce versus art. Near the end, Yoganathan and Cucheron speak tenderly about the heart of theatre. Here, it is still pulsing.
GOD SAVE THE SODOMITES. (Smite-forward.) Lord, have mercy, for I have seen. It was impossible not to: Saint Peter’s ledger lay open on stage, and its records left no room for doubt. Sodom had it coming. Director Jack Davidson pushes us to the threshold of heaven and hell for a waggish weighing of our souls. As we enter the theatre, we are invited to jot down the “goodest” and “baddest” things we have ever done. Those confessions later become dramaturgical material, used to decide whether we Sodomites shall be saved. Guiding us through this celestial tribunal are God’s cheeky assistant Barbiel (Aliyah Bourgeault) and the more intransigent Af (Emmet Logue), both impressively quick-footed improvisers.
Driven by a playful medieval-convention vibe, the show has a smart frame and a genuinely whimsical sense of the divine. God’s voice – sometimes gentle and ladylike, sometimes terrifyingly distorted – unsettles any comforting idea of divine mercy. According to the Fringe website, this ensemble created the piece in a single weekend. Do penance. They are simply too inventive and too charming to err on the side of indolence. This play shows they have an instinct for arresting ideas. If they allow their material to deepen beyond first impulse, I suspect they’ll do even better. Nay – gooder.
ASSEMBLY SÜGGESTED. (Frail.) There is something insidious about assembling furniture. No matter how meticulously one follows the manual, a few bolts go unused, and the chair still feels wobbly. What went wrong? Rymn Wadhwa’s play walks us through the love story of two girls: nonchalant Violet (Ruby Jaclyn) and hyper-aware Joule (Brianna Newman). Except, perhaps, it was never a love story to begin with. It was only a flinch, a misplaced attachment. And even as Joule replays every step, instruction book in hand, nothing quite adds up.
Among a pile of cardboard boxes scattered across the stage, the soft-hearted script is played with delicacy and vulnerability. As the two young women attempt to assemble a chair, Joule’s expectations and hopes linger, waiting to be dismantled. There is no major twist and not much action; instead, the play sits in the ache of misread intimacy. Framing it all is the Narrator (Emma Scoble), who guides us through the story while watching from the outside, as though searching for an explanation herself. “You remember things in a way that hurts you the most,” Violet tells Joule. Perhaps. And lost somewhere between a bolt and a screw, we watch their relationship get pieced together, briefly lock into place, and then collapse in on itself.
OUTSIDE THESE WALLS, EVERYONE IS SLEEPING. (Ritual.) Against the recurring notes of a piano circling three descending tones, a Dreamer (Victoria Matchett) lies curled up in bed, engaged in a ceremony of slowness. When she rises, her body feels heavy and reluctant. Every movement demands too much effort, and even the simplest objects slip from her hands when she tries to pick them up. Outside, cars pass, the wind blows, and birds sing. Life continues somewhere beyond these walls. But she remains trapped inside, caught in the wearying aftermath of a failed relationship.
Though the show falls short on structure and pacing, Brave City Productions conjures a series of spellbinding images. A shadowy figure (Gaia Micciancio) looms over Dreamer, seeming to smother her; then, an opera-singing Moon (Nora Jane Montana) cuts through the darkness with a crystalline voice that feels like a sudden shaft of light. The language and tone remain suspended, almost liturgical, in their clinical anatomy of depression. Yet the piece is ultimately hampered by its repetitiveness, to the point that watching it becomes tedious. It is a pity, because beneath this experimental exploration lies considerable potential.
POLITICAL INQUIRIES. A recurring thread in this year’s Fringe is political inquiry. After all, from Aristophanes to Brecht, the political function of theatre has always been fascinating precisely because it creates a charged relationship with the present. But there are also idiosyncratic risks that can weaken even the noblest intentions. One is telling the audience what it already knows without deepening the conversation. That is how I felt watching Danse Macabre, a historically audacious exploration of slavery from Africa to South America that constantly ricochets between past and present yet never quite finds a dramaturgical spine.
Another risk is a lack of clarity. Who? hú 狐 has moments of striking poetry as it explores human responsibility toward nature, especially in the age of AI. But its structure feels erratic, and its argument remains unfocused. When theatre grows from the ground up, it is often more directly animated by activist impulses, with the “message” framed as either a call to action or a call to recognition. But as Ionesco once quipped, the writer “should not have to deliver a message, because he is not a postman.” How, then, can theatre be political without becoming pedantic? That is for us to find out.
